Kenan Malik appears to understand the difference between believer and the atheist:
The difference between believers and atheists is not about whether either can explain the ultimate cause of the universe. It is about how we wish to explain it. I am happy to say, ‘I do not know what First Cause is, or even if there is one. It may be that one day we discover the answer to that. Or it may be that we never will. For now I am happy to keep an open mind, accept our ignorance of First Cause and live with the uncertainty of not having one’. Believers are unwilling to say that. They insist that there must be a First Cause and that that First Cause must take the form of God. They cannot live with the uncertainty about First Cause that comes with non-belief. In Peter Stannard’s words they know – they have to know – that God exists. The difference between believers and atheists is, in other words, not simply a difference of philosophy, it is also a difference of psychological temper.The difference between a theist — in particular, a monotheist, such as a Christian — and an atheist is more slight than many on either side seem to believe. What a relatively small number of people understand is that there are an infinite number of possible deities one could believe in, from Zeus and Pan to the gods we might imagine ourselves. Thus, the monotheist and the atheist refuse to believe in an almost identical number of those endless possible gods. The only difference is that an atheist has disqualified just one more.
Crucial and often forgotten consequences of the 'first cause' argument include the fact that even on this rather thin and tenuous logic, you can still only get as far as deism. To go further and maintain not only that there is a creator but that this creator is a 'God' — who has an interest in what you eat, wear, and with whom you go to bed, to name a few minor injunctions — requires a much higher standard of evidence. I have little doubt that someone can, in the right frame of mind, reason his or her way to a deistic worldview. Much harder is the step from deism to theism, and the belief, widely held, that God really is on one's own side.
You've heard about this before. We're all aware of the long-held tendency for nations to claim God's support in wartime, even if the other side happens to align themselves with the same divine almighty. We're also acutely aware that these two things cannot be simultaneously right. And yet this risible contradiction, one that makes itself so immediately and conspicuously apparent that even very young children can identify it, doesn't seem to hinder the religious arrogance of, say, the Catholic Church. Ratzinger cannot claim based on the evidence that his church's doctrines are true any more than a senior Scientologist can do the same —but which of these self-proclaimed truth-bearers is taken more seriously? One must merely ask oneself of the facts in any given matter. There's much less danger in believing the logical conclusion. Religion, even in strange à la carte servings, has a much higher standard of proof than it is generally prepared to admit.
(Image via Chicago Now)